17 Messages for PTSD Spouses Who Are Losing HOPE

If you've been researching strategies for couples enduring PTSD, you'll find a prevalance of dreadful divorce statistics and few sources of encouragement.

I get it...inspiration alone has no power to improve what feels like the darkest storms of your life, but what it can do is shift something into gear that propels you toward fighting for just one more day. It just might be the day that everything changes and you find the thing that makes all the difference.

17 Messages to Help PTSD Spouses Who Are Losing HOPE

1. "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." -Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

2. “In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage”-Robert Anderson

3. "You're not a victim for sharing your story, you are a survivor setting the world on fire with your truth. And you never know who needs your light, your warmth and raging courage."-Alex Elle

4. "I welcome the gifts of strength + wisdom that emerge from this struggle."-Melissa Dobson

5. "More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse."-Doug Larson

6. "We go forward, we fall down, we have to pick ourselves up or let someone help us up--we go forward again. That's how change happens, that's how progress is made--through resilient effort, not through self-punishment or hyper frantic judgment."-Sharon Salzberg

7. "I have endured pain and loss, I have felt broken, I have known hardship and I have felt lost and alone. But here I stand, trying to move forward, one day at a time. I will remember the lessons in my life because they are making me who I am. Stronger. A Warrior."-unknown

8. rebirth: the moment when people wake up to their power and start moving toward their freedom-yung pueblo

9. "There's no shame in being broken. You just pick up the pieces and start rebuilding."-Unknown

10. She fell. She crashed. She broke. She cried. She crawled. She hurt. She surrendered. and then...She rose again.- unknown

11. "I love when people who have been through hell walk out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire."-Stephanie Sparkles

12. "The strength of my soul was born on the backs of moments that brought me to my knees."-S.L. Heaton

13. Replace "Why is this happening to me" with "What is this trying to tell me?"-unknown

14. "So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow."-Rainbow Rowell

15. "I'm not asking for the fairy tale. Not the pumpkin. Not the dress. But I expect that both of us are going to show up to this thing like gladiators. With shields. And swords. And cool armor. And all the things it would take to fight FOR one another. Over & over & over again."[email protected]

16. "Sometimes, two people have to fall apart to realize how much they need to fall back together."-Colleen Hoover

17. "My loving presence is more healing than any words could ever be."-Melissa Dobson